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Comment by buboard | Hacker News Reader

How many businesses can I remember around addictions? What s the most famous anti-TV addiction company? Anti-cigarettes? Anti-sex addiction? If it's none, then the opportunity is not underappreciated.

Making an anti-addiction product is by its nature the opposite of a sellable product. And the people who have the frontal lobe to willingly go against their addiction, have already solved their problem.

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This is a good point (about #'s of comparable products), but I disagree that anti-addiction products are inherently unsellable.

I think you could make the argument that weight loss products could fall into this category. There are a ton of diet books/advice, and Weight Watchers has a market cap of 4.4B.

As for actual products, I know there's the kitchen safe:

https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Safe-Locking-Container-Height...

Also 700k+ people have installed StayFocus (a website blocker) for Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...

Yup. Or the nicotine patch.

The best examples are probably in diet, e.g. Weight Watchers, and Jenny Craig. There's a huge industry around drug & alcohol rehab, though it's not easy to see which parts could support startup-type scale. A bunch of these needs are served in the healthcare industry, often with much room for improvement. Healthcare is a totally massive industry.

It's not an easy place to build a business, but there are lots of resources spent on these problems now. They affect families, businesses, and individuals. Figuring out how to line up these things and make a viable business is complex, but some people will figure it out.

You need MDs to prescribe the meds known to help curb the addiction and then you need support systems. Maybe that support system could be an app combined with family/friend support?

Nicotine Patch/Gum

I thought about it , but those came about recently, when cigarettes are known as an active health hazard. So it's more like a health product. We are not yet at the point that tech addiction is considered a health hazard, and imho it will never be, because tech adapts, evolves and improves productivity, and at any give point tech-less life will be a poorer alternative.

Tech is absolutely a health hazard. Driving while texting is measurably as dangerous as driving drunk. It kills people.

Easily solvable with voice recognition or just calling people on hands free. Cutting out usage of phone for that is overkill.

That's definitely a dangerous situation that involves tech, and to some extent tech addiction, but is different from smoking which in all cases has a negative effect on your heath.

Not that you're wrong, but doing anything while driving, besides driving, is a health hazard, so I'm not sure that's a great example.

It's a great example, because it's actually measurably affecting accident rates.

Yeah, but: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eating-driving-80-car-ac...

But then on the other hand: http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructur...

Modern Infotainment systems is cars, where you can replicate your entire phone screen on front console or may be Heads-Up display can cause severe driver distraction.

The addiction is to nicotine, not how you take it. While these are marketed as ways to quit they are really just alternative forms, much like nicotine vaping. It solves the major health issues with tobacco smoking/chewing but doesn't eliminate the addiction.

Great point.

But ... you can sell to parents. Their _job_ is to place helpful limits on their kids due to the fact that the kids' frontal lobes can't (yet?) do it for themselves.

And "tech addiction" is a huge problem among teens.

In my experience as a parent, a lot of parents are just as bad as their kids when it comes to smartphone addiction, phubbing, or whatever you call it.

Nicorette, nicorette, you can beat the cigarette

Soboxone, wellbutrin.

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